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I was in London and there was a guy that was previously kind of a super fan. He said, you know, I used to listen to your pod religiously all the time, but then you guys just talk about the same shit every week. So I stopped listening to it. Nice. It's good to get feedback. I like the feedback. Is that true? I guess we do. Do we just like whine and talk about media all the time? Yeah, I mean, I know that I try to change the topic and it's always back, but let's talk about SEO and ads. And I'm like, fuck, no.

Yeah. It's good to see you, Tiger. What's going on? It's good to see you, too. Well, it's spring break next week. I'm going to Palm Springs. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, I love Palm Springs. Palm Springs.

Welcome to People vs. Algorithms. I'm Brian Marcy. I'm joined by Troy Young, who was just in the UK but is back in Brooklyn. Alex Schlafer does not have a hard stop until at least 3 p.m. Eastern. Yep.

Is the SEO expert going to join us later or no? No, I think maybe we'll have him on next week. Okay, later. And also, you know, as a little preview, we were also going to have Rich on, Rich Antonello from Conference Game. Oh, yeah. That'll be fun. That'll be an explicit label. He's a LinkedIn hustle guy. He's got a lot of life advice. Rich, I love Rich. I've done some great podcasts with him in the past. He definitely proves my theory that if you're, you know,

Yeah, if you're on the internet long enough, you become a life coach. But I like his advice. I have a rant about this. I have a rant about this. I didn't even mean to lead us to this topic. Go ahead. Then we'll get into tariffs. Well, this is sort of related to tariffs. So, I don't know. What did I see? Something about Chamath Palayapatiya on X. And I hadn't been reading much media. I was busy. And then I noticed that he's holding court.

On the flagrant podcast, sort of like bloviating about the deep logic of Trump tariff policy and the underlying, you know, stuff, macroeconomic and sociopolitical logic of it all. He's on YouTube, lots of audience, being interviewed by a famous comedian, Andrew Schultz, the YouTube famous comedian, and his comedian dude pod posse,

And just as a reminder, Chamath studied electrical engineering at Canada's University of Waterloo, and he got lucky and dumb rich by becoming the Facebook growth guy at just the right time, right? And has, by the way, since renounced the evil work he did there. And I'm sure he has wonderful growth skills, and at times he's reasonably articulate, but

and dare i say occasionally insightful alex may disagree with me on that he's not an economist or an experienced policy person he was what about eight months ago red-pilled by his poker pal david sachs since then chamath has seemingly developed a taste for proximity to power

and kind of freely leveraged this and his newfound pod celebrity to sling it around to support the Trump agenda, which is up to him. I'm happy for him. His new celebrity seems fun and he has nice sweaters. And then I stood by, I was like, comedians interviewing a Laura Piana influencer slash growth product person about tariff policy is basically what we've come to expect

in the new and from in the information space. That's media now, right? It's great, isn't it? And in the old times, I was like, well, what would have happened before? And we would have had like, seasoned kind of policy journalists backed by like, economic policy expert editors, backed by fact checking teams, interviewing actual economists and actual experts.

And what does it mean to be an expert? Well, you understand the cause effect connection between things because you're learned. You've studied history. You've studied policy. You've studied economic models. You know your shit. And to watch the sort of Trump tariff policies spill out across social media reminds me, I just kept thinking, this is like,

model UN in high school meets the comedy cellar. But on like a Tuesday night, you know, like not a good night. And then over on the other side, we have Zach. Do you remember Zach from...

Say media Alex. He was Nat Turner's partner. Yeah, Weinberg Yeah, Zack has become kind of an aggressive debater on another YouTube thing Interviewing the took on all the crypto guys one time. Yeah, it was refreshing actually he was going up against Keith Robois who's like a mindless Trump supporter and and kind of schooling him to be honest and

And, you know, you got these two guys, this kind of entrepreneur come venture capitalist with this kind of semi-entrepreneur venture capitalist guy, you know, telling us what we need to know about whether...

Tariffs are, in fact, you know, we're trying to get to use our might to get to a zero tariff world so we can engage in fair free trade or that we're trying to exercise some kind of like industrial policy so that we can, you know, build back, you know,

you know, industrial supremacy in America and protect the long-term interests of the country and use, you know, sort of tariffs as a policy device, seemingly contradictory things, having this conversation. And like, I'm all for, you know, conversation. And I guess that like everything we say and do in public spaces is just media now. But if my lower back hurts and I want to know if it's cancer or not,

I'm going to a doctor. And if I want to know how to, you know, diffuse a nuclear bomb, I'm going to get the right guy. And so, you know, I just, it's really a confusing time. And I think this tariff moment is really kind of illustrative of how I miss experts in media. Yeah. And it's hard to tell really if it's just like the Dunning-Kruger effect where people who

I mean, I think Chamath is very much that, right? Like he had success, so he thinks he knows everything about everything right now. And there's a lot of confidence in when he says things. But there's also the fact that today, it doesn't matter if you change your mind. I mean, it's just proof that

that you can say whatever you want and that the media river just flows by and the next week you can completely change your mind. And we've all seen the super cuts of people reacting to market declines under Biden, like freaking out

All right. And now saying- Benny Johnson had one. That was one that he was freaking out over some little decline, I guess, like a couple years ago. And then it's like cuts to today. And he was like, having no money is fine. It's fine. He's like, what's the big deal? Losing money doesn't cost you anything. You didn't have any money as a child. You were happy. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

You know what it feels like a little bit? It's different in your 50s, though. Yeah. Did you know that the Mission Impossible movies are really interesting because the way they start shooting those is that they set up the stunt and they said, okay, we want Tom to fly off, to jump off a cliff on a motorcycle and land on a train. And they go out and they shoot that stunt and then...

and maybe a couple of others, and then they build the script and story around it. So they start shooting without a script. And this feels exactly like that. Somebody woke up one morning and started throwing random numbers out, and now you have all these sycophants and people that are holding court, like you were saying, and it does feel like that, just trying to build the script around the stunt. And it's maddening because it works.

But it's also kind of thrilling. Let's admit it. I understand what you're saying, Troy, about wishing to have the august economists and unpacking this in a very somber way. But we're well past that. And I don't think there's any going back to that. I found...

just following this over the last week to be really fascinating. I was eager to hear your take. Did you see, did X turn against your mouth after that stupid podcast?

It's hard to say. It's hard to say. Because there's also like, there's also massive Chamath, there's Chamath fanboys deconstructing in, in multi, you know, layered threads. Like what this great man is telling us, like people take him seriously. This is, this is what's weird about it. It's like, he is one of the top grossing. He's the fucking growth guy from Facebook. Yeah.

He's one of the top grossing sub stackers. He has like a $10,000 a month sub stack. And that actually has vaulted him into the top 10 of like sub stack. There's enough people out there that are paying him over a million dollars for access to his sub stack. According to a chart that AB shared, uh,

It's like confidence plus shamelessness. Like, how do we, how do we like get in on that? Well, it's the appearance of confidence. I think that's really is the only thing that matters. It's just that when we verge, you can talk to me about whether you think the New York giants made the right trade and you can just be some fucking guy and that's fine. And you can talk to me about, you know, whether you like the Chinese food at the new Chinese restaurant in Soho. Great. You can be some, some person and,

But when you start talking to me about like really nuanced macroeconomic policy, sometimes I want you to be a doctor. Well, maybe not. Dave Portnoy weighed in. I mean, this actually, I think this is one of the pressure points was Dave Portnoy was, was turning against Trump. Now he's a, he represents an important constituency. And the reality is Trump won from low information voters and,

Right. I mean, I think it was made the point that like 60 percent of Americans read at a sixth grade reading level or lower. That came out during this. Didn't present with that sense, which is fine. But like you have to think like the idea that someone is going to just listen to a Nobel Prize winning economist is just out the window. I mean, look, Trump has.

branded these things as reciprocal tariffs. And the New York Times has to put it in quotes because it's like literally they're not reciprocal. Like they don't match up. So you can't just take a word and say it means something else. You have to put it in quotes. Is there a breaking point though? Is there like a breaking point where...

to me it's like it seems to be escalating and the the it's so flagrant you know like the podcast that it's it's like at some point it becomes noticeable wait the you were telling us last year is completely different to the you were telling us this year and the whole like manosphere grift space like that there's all these playbooks that are being played up all the time where people just change their minds or

Just say the opposite thing that they were last week or become Christian because all of a sudden there's rape accusations like Russell Brand, right? Russell Brand turned Christian. He's a Floridian now. So yeah, move to Florida. I think he's actually, I think Russell Brand is also a macroeconomic policy expert. Yeah, if anybody moves to Florida and becomes a Christian, something's coming.

Short that stuff. Yeah. Short it. So here's my positive take on this, right? Is the way these things normally, and I'm going to try my best. The way these things normally take place is they're very controlled rollouts. Everyone gets their talking points and you have surrogates that go out there with their talking points. That is not what happened here.

We had the world's richest man who is also a close advisor of the president calling his top trade policy architect Peter Retardo. I can say that now. I have no money in my 401k, but I can say that. It was worth it. It was worth it.

You know, we've got Dave Portnoy. We have Scott Besson sent out to do the hard yards, not just on the cable. But the character he's become in this sort of expert, the new expert land is he's the guy that made his mark with smart trades. He's held up by everyone to be, well, at least there's Scott.

At least someone's smart there, right? At least there's someone who knows what they're doing. Oh, Scott, you know, is soft-spoken and has thick glasses. He's like nerd stock. He's like real, he'll take care of it. He'll take care of it. He's got a good part. He's got a classic part, you know? Like he's got the sweep.

It's good. He looks good. He looks the part, but he was on Tucker Carlson explaining it. And then he was on like all in. So it's interesting how this stuff is now filtered through the information space. Did you see that Walter Bloomberg, which is a pseudonymous X account, caused a $2.4 trillion swing in the market? Yeah.

by misreporting that the tariffs were off. Is that Bloomberg's brother? Hey, is this what happens when you sell blue check marks for like eight bucks a month?

You know, all of these like things of no consequence are having like really real consequences. But here's my positive take on it. I would rather have like his advisors duking it out in public and have this sort of all playing out transparently than the strategic leaks and the talking points because it lays bare sort of

how the sausage is truly made. Now, I think it's extreme in this case, but anyone who's ever worked in a restaurant knows that the kitchen is a mess. That's become a mega talking point, actually. Yeah. Which is we're the most transparent government ever. Well, it's true. Yeah.

It's true. Like, they're definitely not hiding Trump. They might want to, but like, they're not hiding him. That's for sure. You cannot accuse them of that. I don't want it to get conflated with honesty though, right? Like, I think it's still super dodgy what's going on with all of this stuff. And I think transparency would also require honesty. I mean, you know, they're saying stuff, but, you know, it doesn't mean that it's true. It's what came. I mean, like you said, Brian, we came last week and we talked memes with Nick.

you know, narratives are powerful things. And, you know, the Republicans have stolen the kind of working man Main Street platform. And, you know, this is all seemingly, I mean, you know, there's a lot of

conversation about motives here. Like, what are the motives? What's our objective? And, you know, you can see a kind of populist narrative underneath of this, that this is all about not rewarding the bankers and lawyer class, but, you know, doing something for Main Street. And Scott Besson's out talking about this, and Trump talks about it, and all of the sycophants talk about it. Meanwhile, I cannot...

I walked home from a meeting this morning and I was just like walking by stores and, you know, just kind of, I don't think that there is a single business that isn't like shitting their pants right now. Yeah. Small businesses that have lost, you know, not just that they're, you need to thrive in volatility, but like, you know, that they can't order next season's clothing for their little clothing boutique in New York city because they're

of they don't know where they're going to get it and at what price. Yeah. I mean, it's happening to Apple. Yeah. Well, let's talk about the downstream impacts of the real world impacts beyond this information space nonsense of this. Because it is going to. I mean, look, this thing is whipsawed back and forth. And now it's back to, oh, it's just about China. And this is going to go on for a long time.

yeah but I mean let's stick stick to the information space like advertising advertising first first to go always the first she and Timu that's gone all these little you know b2c retailers that kind of like you know that I keep seeing on Instagram that are trying to sell me beard oil I mean maybe the beard oil is fine but you know like little clocks and things like where do they make where do they make beard oil

I don't know. Mine is kind of like honest Amish. So I think it's... So the Amish make it? Yeah. So maybe it is American made. Yeah, maybe. And then they sell it to the English. Like advertising, like what happens? Like this kind of magnificent seven stocks are being shorted, I think in large part, Google and Facebook and Meta because of kind of the advertising hit this is going to take.

this is going to bring with it, no? Just sticking to media and talking about advertising. Yeah, I mean, look, it's always downstream of that. I mean, advertising is the easiest thing to turn off. You can't like stop building a plan or data. I mean, I guess you can. Microsoft stopped a data center, but it's harder. Capital investments are harder. You can always cut advertising. I always joke that

You know a recession's coming when one of those articles pops up on AdAge saying, the worst thing to do is to cut advertising during a downturn. No CFO apparently reads AdAge because they always cut it. We cut it at Airbnb pretty extensively. And for a second, it didn't make a difference. So maybe that was the learning. Oh, well, that was the performance stuff. I remember that stuff. Yeah, it's kind of, I think one of the big sort of,

impacts of all of this is with the overall soft power of America. America's exports are mostly in services, yes, but in cultural products. And I think that's an underrated aspect of this. The US national anthem is being booed at NHL games in Canada by your people, Troy. I kind of don't blame them, to be honest with you. And I

I think that's going to have a real impact. I mean, obviously, China is going to go after Hollywood. I mean, there's a reason their stocks got crushed. They've done this before. They're going to stop showing Hollywood movies. There's going to be a tremendous amount of impact of this disruption because I do not see Trump...

And the Trump administration all of a sudden snapping back to being like, oh, yeah, well, we tried that. And that's, you know, we're just going to go back to being like normal. This is going to be three and three quarters years, at least, of this. Yeah. And so in that time, you need at least two to four years to start unshoring anything. I don't know who's going to start doing that. So the external factors of that is definitely like,

these new alliances forming, right? We might be seeing new alliances in Asia. Like a lot of the news I'm hearing from Europe as a European, I actually feel pretty good about, right? Europe feels more united than ever before. They're going to invest in their own defenses. They're going to start, I mean, talk about onshoring. Like I think Europe is starting to build, you know, it's kind of like reinforcing itself against this stuff and it will create new alliances. I mean, like this is...

I mean, it's terrible for China in the short term, right? Terrible for China in the short term. But in the long term, China's going to be making alliances with all these other Western alliances. And that's what happens when you run a country as a fucking business. A business doesn't have alliances, doesn't have friends. In a business, you're always competing. And if you lose out, if somebody else wins, you usually lose out. You see everybody else as competitors, or at least that's the way these folks are seeing it. And that's not a way to run a country

a country. And so, although Trump is, is kind of like, he's going back to the gilded age and that mercantilism where there were a lot of alliances, businesses allied with, with each other in order to avoid competition. So there is hope for that. But one positive that has come out of this Troy, and I thought of you when I saw this, I went to politico.eu and I X'd out of a massive cookie consent banner to find a

that the European, I'll just read it. "Europe's most famous technology law, the GDPR, is next on the hit list as the European Union pushes ahead with its regulatory killing spree to slash laws it reckons are weighing down its businesses." So GDPR, all of this could be in service of a greater good, and that is the end of the tyranny of GDPR.

Congratulations. I mean, it couldn't have happened soon enough, to be honest. It's ridiculous. It doesn't protect anyone. And it adds terrible friction to an already horrible consumer medium as a media delivery mechanism. So great. It's great. It was great. It was great policy. Can you explain what it is and what the impact is on people outside of Europe? Well, it's meant to protect people's privacy, to let people know that they're being tracked in some shape or form, either as a cookie that helps people

you know, create functionality on a website or is used for ad targeting. And you see it on every website, the little bottom banner that says, you know, you can opt in or opt out. Everybody engineers it. So actually opting out is way harder. So everybody, you know, the opt in rates are something like 60% or something like that.

And it's just, it was, it created an entire new industry in ad tech that are, I guess, good for people like Brian that take their money for, well, advertising the consent provider companies. No, I haven't. I tried to sell SourcePoint, but no, we didn't do any business. It was yet another expense for media companies. By the way, and the people that had authenticated users like Google and Meta never suffered at all.

Because you just locked it. It locked in competition. It was benefited this podcast as well, because it's probably 15 percent of our content is Troy complaining about it. So it's been what it cost. It cost. I saw a study. It cost between one point seven million for small, medium sized firms to up to 70 million dollars for compliance. I couldn't find a total cost of GDPR. And for what? Like, what did we get out of it?

What did it do? It killed retargeting? Here's the thing, maybe also to clarify, and Troy is so, I'm going to ask, how does that, why does GDPR, you can't defend GDPR, Alex. This is one thing that unites all Americans. I'm not defending it. I mean, it unites Europeans. In favor? Why did GDPR impact America? Tell me what's in my sausage.

Don't put a useless banner on the bottom of my website. I'm good with that. I'm literally asking. It's maybe a chance. Vanya, maybe edit this out. What I'm trying to frame is... No, you can't keep doing that. Part of the beauty of your mind and this podcast is spontaneity, Alex. You're misunderstanding me. No, I'm not going to let Vanya edit out anything. What I'm trying to ask you is...

Let's frame it for people. Like how did GDPR, because a lot of people I talk to hear about GDPR and I explain it to them, but isn't that a European thing? How does that affect me?

You have to follow GDPR because you can't serve different customers in different markets. It's a global market for information. And so if you're operating, you're going to have to change how you operate because of GDPR. You're liable for fines as an American business. Yeah. In real terms, the ugly cookie window you get at the beginning of a page, that's GDPR.

Yes. That's the most tangible manifestation of GDPR that all of us have had to endure. Now Americans won't have money to travel to Europe, so they won't have to endure it. It's even worse in Europe, right?

Oh, it's horrific. Yeah, you're just hexing out. Troy, weren't you just like closing cookie consent windows? I don't even use the internet in Europe. You just gave up. I mean, you're saying that, but I think it actually pushes people away from the open web and towards apps, right? There's like all these downstream effects that came from it. And it was probably like one of the, just like one of the most anti-open web

policies ever. I'm very anti-GDPR. Also, if you wanted to do this, force the browser makers to make some sort of built-in browser interface that handles that. Plus, Alex, the cookie was the only concession towards a coherent kind of recognizing the user in a browser session. Yes. And it's also asking people to make a decision that they don't fully understand.

And so people just click, yes, oh, I don't care. None of that. So I think the idea was flawed. The execution was flawed. And in the end, everybody suffered. How long has it been going on for? I don't know. Six, seven years. So I'm all here for this nightmare to end, Troy. I'm with you. I poked the bear a little bit because you're funny when you get angry at things. Seven years. Seven years later. He's so cute when you're angry. You're cute when you're angry.

Okay. But again, this is due to the pressure that is being put on a lot of... It's like good changes can come. Like Germany is now spending. They're stopping their silliness with any sort of debt. And so good things can come out of this kind of disruption. So let's be open to... I'm worried about Germany, as you know.

Are you? You're worried about their levels of infrastructure? No, I'm worried that their industrial backbone is about to be decimated by the Chinese, by the destruction of the automotive business. The BYDs. I worry about that. My brother was just in China. It's like their car industry is just so far ahead of ours. I mean, do you know like the China increased...

It's export. So the Chinese car industry used to be kind of very internally facing, but they increased their export. And one of the biggest increase are the combustion engines because they have a massive production capacity for combustion engine. But Chinese consumers aren't really buying combustion cars anymore. They're all switching to electric cars. So all these combustion engine cars are flooding the markets outside of China.

So it's kind of wild. They've leaped ahead in that. And meanwhile, here we're hoping to bring back

you know, manufacturing jobs in Detroit to good old fashioned cars like in the 50s. You know what, Alex, if you had just waited and not bought that Lucid, you could have paid maybe, I don't know if you can get a BYD if you pay a massive tariff on it or they're just completely restricted from the US market. But they now have one that comes with a drone on top of it. They have a partnership with the drone company. Yeah. And so you can control that. I presume you can control the drone from your dashboard.

I saw one. That's what I needed. The cops have them in New York. They put a drone tethered from the top of those SUVs outside of major events. So if they ever have to do crowd surveillance, they just let it go. Dang. But now everybody has one of those, right? Can you imagine driving down the road? Look at the traffic ahead. Like that kind of thing.

You know, like you're driving through the countryside and you want an aerial shot. You just release the drone. You know, you probably see the image on your dashboard in the car. It's kind of cool. It's like what if little 13-year-old boys design cars?

You'd put a drone on top. I'm very happy with my Lucid. It's a really beautiful car. And apparently it's done really well. I mean, I think it's picking up a lot of... They sell about 40 of them a month, Alex. Tesla orphans. 40. There is no Lucid without PIF. Lucid is entirely funded as a massive loss-making company by the Saudis. Just so you know the trade you're making. Well, I don't mind. Yeah, did you get the model Khashoggi?

It's a nice one. Oh, my God. We've moved beyond the Khashoggi stuff. You want to move up the production line for any product you own and see how it makes you feel. I don't know. So one of the other downstream impacts is Apple is in a pickle.

Right? Massive. I don't know. Can you unpack this a little bit? Because I think Tim Cook's legacy is really going to be interesting with how this turns out. Let's bring on our Apple specialist, Alex. He was the supply chain guy, and it seems like they missed on AI, and that's the two big totems of this.

Watch for a little blip in their sales last week and the week before. I ran out and I bought an iPhone. I think people are... I don't want to pay $400 more for my iPhone. I bought another iPhone. I mean, they're scrambling. And apparently, even before the tariffs were announced, a lot of people

PC manufacturers and Apple were trying to front load imports of their most expensive models. So like a lot of high end models were brought into the country because they expected some tariffs. But at this rate, I think Apple is a... But I don't think they expected 135%. No, nobody did. Nobody did. That's why it wasn't factored into the market. Like it's nobody did.

It was priced in at something way lower. No, I mean, Apple's in real trouble. They're building some of their stuff in India. They've tried to unshore some of these things. I think Apple, it could be existential if they don't strike a deal. And I'm sure Tim Cook is spending a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago right now to try to get this done. It used to be that there's always been this risk, right? Like a big...

like one of the biggest geopolitical risks was, you know, if China invaded Taiwan, for example, right? And that would severely disrupt our entire, you know, semiconductor industry and computing and stuff like that. But Apple would be in real trouble because it would probably, you know,

Stop anything coming from China. Is it true, Alex, that you need tiny little delicate adolescent fingers to do the final assembly? Yeah, I think American fingers are a little too big for... Did you see the Chinese... But can you fact check that, Alex? Am I fact checking that with you? We probably can't do the assembly...

just because of our anatomy? Yes. But did you see the Chinese memes that were being created, the AI memes of fat Americans trying to screw in little iPhones? Little iPhone screws. Dave Chappelle had a good line where he said, I want to wear Nikes. I don't want to make them. If Americans designed iPhones or actually executed them, they would look like those things that you hang over top of a baby to twist the knobs. Yes.

I mean, but that stuff isn't... On showing that stuff, I mean, I've heard different numbers, like between five and ten years, it would make the iPhone cost like two and a half thousand dollars. I mean, it's not a serious plan. And at the same time, like, what do you do, right? This trade war has... Even if it resolves itself, I think it's fundamentally changed the way people look at where they get their parts from and...

and what's reliable long-term. Tim Cook, that's his legacy, having set up this incredible, incredible supply chain that meant that these new phones would come out every year with no fault. People would deliver them. They wouldn't have delays. They wouldn't have any stock issues. I mean, it's incredible what they set up. But it turns out it's a house of cards.

And a lot of people are very, very worried. And, you know, the Mag 7, which includes NVIDIA and Apple, also has been holding up the stock market, right? It's like big chunks of people's portfolios and 401ks is held up in these stocks. And I think the decline we're seeing in Apple right now could feel like a tiny blip compared to what happens if these tariffs like

if the tariffs war kind of keeps escalating it's at 145 now i mean that's essentially no trade from china

Does it mean we're not going to get a new season of Severance? I mean, it means that I think that the billion that they're losing on Apple TV will just seem like a small fright. They might just want to spend entirely on services. I mean, it could mean like massive things, right? The delay of the next iPhone. It could mean, for me, it could mean like I don't get my Switch 2 when it comes out. You know, Nintendo had announced the Switch 2 pre-orders closed.

were meant to start yesterday or this week. They basically canceled their pre-orders for the US. The rest of the world got to pre-order. We didn't. I don't think it's crazy to think there's a possibility that Apple and Amazon spend less on the streaming that's losing money. Why would that be insane? Because services is the only thing that's... If the hardware faucet has to stop for a while, investing in services is the only thing you can do.

I don't think... Apple doesn't need to save money. I think they're sitting on plenty of cash. They can wait things out at the very least. If they have trouble supplying hardware...

I would see them investing fully in software. They're going to release a new iOS version and fully on services. Services is also the part of the business that's growing the fastest. So I wouldn't see that happen. And I think right now they're looking at the service as a portfolio. They're not seemingly caring so much about how much money they're losing. I mean, a billion dollars for Apple is nothing. Alex, do they have to bifurcate their portfolio?

so that they serve, they sell iPhones in China, they serve the Chinese market and the European market and those not affected by the American tariffs from a Chinese production facility and try to serve the rest of the world in other ways? How does it evolve? I have no idea. We should get Chamath on. We should get Chamath on. Yeah, I've never heard him say that. That would be...

Anybody who's friends and takes Jason Karkana seriously, we should kind of look at again. I'm coming around on Jason, to be honest with you. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. He laid me off, so there's that. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I think we're going to see a lot of... I think...

Apple for sure is going to be used as a bargaining chip as this goes on. And I don't know how long it can go on for. I mean, they're planning two, three, four years ahead for these next iPhones. And that must have put everything up, you know, everything's in turmoil right now. But also, I mean, the big, you know, the card that China can play is just saying, all right, we're not respecting any intellectual property anymore. That's the big card. Everybody's terrified of that.

Sorry, they did before? No, they did. There's a semblance of them doing it and they did enough so that large companies like Apple felt comfortable working with Foxconn and things like that, knowing that their intellectual property would be respected. Now, fine, you can go to China and there's

like a cafe somewhere called Disneyland and nobody's doing anything about it and you can get a fake Nike's and stuff like that. There's a, there's a black it's, but it's, it's handled as a black market that changes, right? If you're saying, well, you're implying those tariffs. Now we're putting a freeze on any IP partnerships that we had in place.

And that's, you know, okay, well, now we're going to start selling iPhones in India. Yeah, you have a night, you end up waking up in cold shivers, realizing that if you had to live in the country of America, where everything was made in America, it would be like living in Russia, where they have fake McDonald's. Russia, interestingly, no tariffs.

That would have a lot of trade. The DTC industry is going to be, that's a tough one. Any thoughts there, Troy, on second order impacts? Because, you know, a lot of these companies... I think it's, I honestly think it's catastrophic for a lot of them. You know, even people that design their own products, I know several that design their own products that are manufactured, you know, in China or elsewhere. Yeah.

you know, are looking at huge price increases in a really... in a business that just has really narrow margins. So it's pretty... It's going to be... Yeah, I mean, when ad pricing... It's going to get pushed, you know, to the consumer or they go out of business. When ad pricing rose because of different, like, ad targeting issues... That shut down a wave of DTC companies, yeah. Now, I mean...

They're already operating on thin margins and they're all reliant, almost all reliant on Chinese supply chains. And that's because they weren't really product companies. They didn't make the products. I mean, I guess that is sort of at the heart of all of this is that

even the companies that we think of as like making and selling products, they don't make the products. They just, they're branding. I mean, that's why I always think authentic brands group is like the ultimate company of like late stage capitalism because. Yeah. That actually leads me to a new place. If you're getting tired of this conversation, which is what do you do with vanity? What do you do with Vanity Fair?

Wow. What do you do? Oh, you absolutely make... I asked you this on the WhatsApp and you said harvest. Well, you know what? I mean, we can maybe have a more intelligent conversation than that. Well, I was hoping for it on the WhatsApp, so maybe we can have it now. Yeah, I mean, we'll leave it to the nice people at Puck to go on endlessly about it. Wow, shots fired. You know, John at Puck made this kind of, you know, he was reflecting, I think, pretty honestly and courageously on...

you know, the Graydon Carter years versus Radhika Jones. You know, he said that, you know, being an editor isn't what most people think. It surprises people. You're not like, you know, pouring over texts and assigning stories really, you know, the great insight from Graydon per this is, I'll credit this to John was, you know, the simple idea that Hollywood wanted to see themselves in the, you know, in the pages of a,

of a prestigious magazine that fashion companies wanted to see, you know, the elite in their clothing on the pages of magazines. And that if you did that, you could create an economic system where you funded really sophisticated journalism and storytelling that, you know, reinforced the, the, the whole,

kind of enterprise with, you know, a really high quality product that all, you know, seems great. And it, and it, and it underneath of that was the kind of certainty of the business model and

And a structure where, relatively speaking, you had far less competition. You had the sort of oligopolistic benefits of being a scaled print enterprise, a couple hundred million in revenue. And you could kind of just invest to keep that engine going. And I think that for the new editor, you know, media brands take a long, long time to kill.

And they last, you know, a lot longer than you think. You can make mistakes on covers. You can, you know, go through crisis. You know, you can you can navigate bad years. And to most people, Vanity Fair is still that idea of Vanity Fair. And it lasts a long time.

I think that the Vanity Fair, the barometer in some ways, it becomes the Oscars event, which is a longstanding franchise of that brand, the Vanity Fair Oscars party. And the sort of smack talk this year was like, people didn't really hang out there. They go there, they take a photo, then they go to a real party. Over time...

that institution just becomes less and less important. And you can get someone in that's very business-minded but creative. And I think that's the sort of Venn diagram you have to put together, which is a great appreciation of where

you know, culture is going and how you can play a role in that uniquely as a media brand. And then, you know, how that becomes, you know, a good business. And that's what I think a great magazine editor was able to do. I just think that now the business part of it is so difficult because

Because there is no stability at all to the, you know, to the underlying kind of media mechanics. So what are you doing if you're Vanity Fair, Brian? You're the editor of Vanity Fair. Maybe that's not your gig. You might want to do some other type of publication, but let's say it was.

You're trying to figure out how am I relevant if not in print? Am I making more, you know, short celebrity interview videos on YouTube, which I don't make any money from? Am I going to take that game to TikTok and Instagram? Am I doing, you know, fast paced newsroom type? Am I in that game competing for, you know, a seat, you know, at the table against, you

Well-funded kind of newspaper platforms like the New York Times or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal or any of those or the Atlantic, you know, what is, what role do you play in this ecosystem such that you have enough money to fund the kind of journalism that's going to make you famous?

Well, you got to figure out what you're a front business for, right? Like the only path is to be a front business. I mean, you're either going to be- You mean like for sunscreen and like sunglasses? No, it could be for parties. It could be for- But parties don't, they don't- Classy, classy harvesting of the IP, you know? Well, that's what I'm saying. That's, I would harvest that IP all day long. Yeah, that's the classy version. I would love that. That's classy. Harvesting the IP is classy. Harvesting the IP is classy. Yeah.

Well, well. What? I mean, it's better than... That's why we all got into media. It's better than the SEO glue factory, right? It's better than that. Well, it's the IP glue factory is what it is, Brett. I don't know. It's not that... What do you even do with Vanity Fair? I'm sorry. That's why I'm asking. Well, throw it over to Alex. What do you do, Alex? They're searching now for a global editorial director. And what they describe it as...

This position develops strategies to drive editorial excellence, audience growth, and revenue. It's a public-facing role, and you're representing the title to the industry. I mean, it's like a biz dev role as much as it is an editorial role. You're not doing line-up. I feel like Vanity Fair, and maybe that's kind of my...

My oblique view of it, I think Vanity Fair's kind of brand power is so tied to the concept of celebrity. And that has been fundamentally changed. Whereas, A, celebrities have changed. I just heard somebody call George Clooney a B-lister. And at first I was like, what? And then I, yeah, for sure. Like these celebrities that used to

attract so much attention and just you could that's not fair that's not fair well hang on let me finish i mean i don't i they you know used to be able to put you know a name at the top of a movie poster and attract an audience and i think now celebrity when it is a lister like if it's a chalamet or if it's a pedro pascal which are really true a listers you know they'll do the vanity fair but

cover shoot and stuff like that, but it's all peripheral. Most of that attention, most of their audience connection is like, you know, we talked about that before is participatory. And I think this kind of like non participatory relationship with celebrities is, is gone. And those brands that used to basically just act as a vehicle for that, for, for like connecting with a celebrity within the confines of that brand are

are no longer relevant. And I think that I don't know if the brand stands for anything. So I don't know what I'd do with it. Maybe you'd make it be really like a really cool game where you like go from the Vanity Fair Oscar party where you do like you get points for engaging

engaging with paparazzi and you know then you go to the buffet and get the free sushi and you get points for that you see if you can do it all and have a couple i mean there's a game in that alex you could make sure yeah there's a yeah there's a free free mobile game like a kardashian mobile game where you you just yeah we're harvesting the ip as we speak yeah yeah this is fun

Brian, you've got a good mind for this. How would you harvest that IP? Sweaters or jackets or what would you...

I was thinking something with high margin like sunscreen. You know what? This is what I was asking you about the fashion credit system. Like there needs to be an updated version of this because I don't think a lot of people understand like the role of fashion credits. Can you explain like what role that fashion credits have played in these kinds of things? Yeah. There was a kind of invisible balance sheet with the luxury fashion industry that

where you would feature them in the edit of a prestigious magazine like a Bazaar or Nell or Vogue or Vanity Fair. And for that, you would essentially get credits.

And those credits were something that the companies, the, you know, that the brands kept track of. And so the ultimate credit is a star on the cover of Vogue dressed in Saint Laurent or something like that. Right. Like you, you, you want, and, and those credits, you pay those off in, in booked advertising in the pages of the magazine. And that was a system. You didn't monetize them directly. You monetize them indirectly, right?

So what's the modern version of that? I mean, it's a little sketchy, but that means it's like, it's a good business. Yeah. I don't know. It's influencers getting free shit. I'm going to turn us away from, from talking about the dead brand. And talk about it. You're pulling a throat here. You're putting your foot down. You're changing. You're like, Brian, you're not doing your job. Let's go. It's like, yeah, but how are we going to make Humphrey Bogart cool again?

I'm like, he was cool. And now he's not. That's fine. All right. So we won't talk about Quartz. Fine. Well, I did want to talk about maybe Quartz, but Digg just relaunched. Just relaunched. Breaking news. Right? And they launched with early access. And here's the thing they did. Early access is $5. Right?

You can get early access, but you have to pay. And it's genius. I think it's absolutely the right thing to do. It's a way of doing moderation and bringing in people who are serious about the product. But it's going to be interesting to see if a brand like...

Like Digg has an e-mail address. I just gave them my e-mail address, Alex. Where do they charge me the $5? I think when you get the invite entry is at $5. Okay. Is this like an extensible strategy to give people early access for $5?

I think it's a great strategy because what it does is it stops your servers from getting overloaded. It's a filtering mechanism that people that come in are just more committed to what they're about to do. It funds some of the beginning of the product. It shows interest. It shows true interest, right? Like, whoa, shit, 10,000 people paid $5 each is...

is a way better signal of future success than 100,000 people paid zero. What do you expect from this product, Alex? Do you have any insight into what it's going to be? Yeah, I mean, I think they're trying to... I mean, they're not trying to compete directly with... They've talked about... With Reddit, you mean? Sorry, with Reddit. I think some of the thing that they want to do, which Reddit stopped becoming, is really...

recreate this homepage of the internet thing. Like you used to go, and I still do that with Reddit somehow, but you used to go to these pages like Dig and see, oh, what's happening on the internet today? And using AI, of course, as part of that. So I don't know exactly what it looks like. I haven't tested it out yet. I mean, it makes sense in that like you...

You can't go on social media platforms in order to find links to interesting stuff. They've deprioritized it and there needs to be somewhere to go to find interesting stuff.

interesting, cool shit. Yeah, I mean, I find it like, I like finding interesting, cool shit on the internet, but the thing is that social media... Yeah, I like surfing. You like surfing the net, Alex? Why can't Vanity Fair be the new dig, Alex? Yeah. Now we're talking about modern. Let's talk about a place to go to surf.

But, you know, maybe it is true like that these – I think part of these brands that I don't think can be resuscitated are maybe too connected to a cultural phenomenon that is changing or dying out. Like I do think, you know, Vanity Fair is too connected to this type of like very unapproachable –

high-end celebrity, while something like Digg is more trying to solve something and providing some utility. So Digg has more of a chance of surviving. I mean, another one that's doing pretty well is our friends at Yahoo, right? Who would have thought that you could turn Yahoo around? But didn't they do that?

Yahoo is taken seriously today. Define turnaround. I feel like Yahoo was being seen as a dying asset. People were kind of landing on it by mistake or kind of using it reflexively. And I feel that it's like a much healthier business today. And I think people see the brand differently.

Nice. I'm happy about that. Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't have all the data. I mean, I think it's doing very well financially. I think that Yahoo Finance is better than it was. I think Yahoo Sports is way better than it was. You know, I think that your friend Matt's done a nice job on the homepage. You know, the pressure on Yahoo broadly is that

that type of information provisioning on a page is under pressure. Where does all the traffic come from? So people just have...

It's much more direct than most properties, Brian. A lot of it comes from, it's kind of its own ecosystem because people use mail. People track their portfolios on Yahoo Finance. People play Yahoo Fantasy Sports. By the way, all of them are, you know, this notion that we brought up in the last episode.

People versus algorithms weekender. What is it? Is it weekender? Good day. Yeah. Weekend, which is ultimately the internet demands that we, that, that media makes room for us.

you got to participate, right? Like fantasy sports, participate, track my portfolio, participate, you know, use my, you know, like, it's just like the internet's an interactive place. Yeah. Most people don't sit and read articles. I mean, I think it's the last, it's the last, you know, remember portals. It's the last great portal. It still provides a ton of utility and,

But lots of people use Yahoo Mail. Lots of people instinctively go to Yahoo Weather or Yahoo Finance to see the thing. Yahoo Mail is growing. It's a very important metric.

That's crazy, right? Like three, four years ago. People are opening new email. Like I guess they're getting email for the first time. Does someone like, I don't know what would happen for me to get a new email account. Would a kid, a kid who needs email, go to Yahoo and get an email. Hey grandma, you should get on email. Go to Yahoo and get an email. I have a Hotmail too. Oh, you want a second email account to track your e-commerce activity? Get a Yahoo email account. Yeah. I got a place for receipts.

So, I mean, I think if you build in utility, a lot of these things could potentially be good turnaround stories. I think Yahoo is turning out to be good turnaround stories. And AOL still has more EBITDA than any other company in digital media. So there's that too, which says something. I don't know what it says, but it says something. It says that when you had your moment and if you were able to monetize that with subscriptions, AOL was TikTok for grandma.

It's great. Let's talk AI for a little bit at the end. Did you see Toby Lutke? Am I pronouncing that correctly? Yeah. He's got an umlaut. He came out with a memo, a quote-unquote leaked memo. I always think these things. Is he the king of Silicon Valley North? Ottawa? He could be. I like Toby. Don't know him personally myself. I know him. He's a cool guy. So basically the memo was a bit of a manifesto telling everyone that...

AI is the starting point. It's a baseline expectation to be using AI in every single role, which I think it's like, it's an obvious one, but it's probably necessary at this point. I just noticed myself, like I use...

chat gbt not just every day but all the time i've i've narrowed it down gemini no no the anthropic and clog no i just i've just decided to go all in on chat gbt we don't want more than one do we

We just want one. I think chat should be, I think open AI is going to run away with this thing. I think they have a real brand. They have a real product. They are. But at the same time, I think it's going to be like a browser and it's going to be commoditized. But we, we, we had to go back to, to, but, but this is a real testament to the, you know, power of this. Cause Brian doesn't,

Brian is like high utility boy. You know what I mean? He doesn't romance technology like you and I, Alex.

Yeah, either you're like a Waterpik toothbrush guy or you're a normal toothbrush guy. For example, you guys have been trying to get you guys to buy a new camera for like the last six months. And here we are still looking like we're recording. Do you use a Waterpik? I have something with a custom mouthpiece that's molded to my mouth that shoots a jet.

in seven seconds as a professional cleaning in my own bathroom. Thank you. That's right. So I kind of sent a note to Toby after that and said, like, I completely agreed with it. And I think it turns out from what I'm hearing that internally at Shopify, I don't think it created as much of a ruckus. I think people took it pretty naturally. And I heard that from multiple places. Externally, I think it's absolutely the right thing to do. And maybe...

you know, sometimes it's controversial to say, but if you don't incentivize people to try new technologies, that stuff is going to be, it's just going to move slower, right? In the beginning of the PC, you know, the kind of the release of these like personal computers, like corporations were really slow to integrate that into the companies because people are naturally not inclined to try new things, right? You know what struck me, Alex, is this idea, simple idea in that memo,

I was just in a meeting where we did this. It's like, we need to build this competency. Here's all the people we need to hire. There's this role, this role, this role. And now in the future, when someone sends a job opening request to HR, the automated response sends them back, have you tried AI? Yeah.

Yes. And sometimes it'll be ridiculous. And you say, well, of course, it won't work with AI. But you just need to get people to think about it for a second. Yeah, like we need a tariff policy analyst from the White House. They opened up a job record. No, just use AI. Well, this is what he said. He said, before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI.

That's big. What would this area look like? I'm telling you, that's the single biggest thing in that memo that's going to influence everyone in a corporate role. And I think it's one of those things where it'll also, I think it's going to be mimicked by everyone. And I think it would be a mistake to see it like, well, you're just asking us to replace people with the AI. No, we're asking everyone to think through their process. So, you know, I've done a lot of consulting in my life and I've worked with really large teams. You will work into...

walk into these teams and you look at their tooling and their processes and how they do things oh yeah no that stuff is like bob just copy and paste it into a spreadsheet and then frank pulls it out and you're like wait we could spend a day fixing this and saving hours every week for the rest rest of our working lives here and we're not doing that and so just to push people say hey

Before you do this, think about it. Just think about it. I think it's great. And it's great in personal life. Like, okay, I'm doing this thing over and over. Can chat GPT, can AI, can a tool improve it? I think the Morrissey anecdote here is powerful. And Brian, I'm trolling a little bit, but I'm going to do it. I'll do it really, really in a complimentary fashion.

Last week, and Brian is a kind of technology, he's not a Luddite, but he's like, you're not technology forward. We host a podcast with Nick Denton. Brian sort of

is, I would say, 80% engaged. He's engaged. You're engaged. No, I mean, actually, just pause on that for a second. Brian was working really hard to get that conversation back to media and Nick was not interested. I know. He's like, I haven't thought about it very much. Brian once in a while would go, so what about media? And he would go, well, you know...

What is the movie? Like Bulgaria or whatever? Yeah. Right, right. Hungary. But anyway, so Brian gets off the podcast and he feeds the transcript into his AIs, Alex. And then he writes literally like a beautiful piece of copy, like beautiful. I would encourage everyone to read it about the interview. And I know it. I loved it. It brought me to tears. And he did it all in two hours.

Okay, so this is like a kind of like an entry. This is like an FT level, you know, $20,000 piece and a podcast and all of the related activities to do all of that done in like four hours total.

for nothing. And technology plays a huge role in that being what it is. Yeah, and I think it's exactly the way you should use this stuff. It's like an augmentation, right? Yeah, it's like assistive. It's truly assistive. Because where I like, you know, it's just like writing, you put like TK. TK, do you know TK? Yeah, yeah, I know TK. Tim Cook? TK quote, and then it just like, it'll fill it in. You just tell it to fill it in.

And then you just go back and forth with it. I think a lot of times people get... It pulled the right quotes out of the transcript, right? Yeah. Yeah, because I upload the transcript that has all of my writings and then I start it. It comes up with ideas. And I think a lot of times people react against AI because they look at it as a replacement and it's an easy button.

And it's saying they react both, both positively and negatively. So, so, but I think that's been kind of the, the we're blindsided by that. And I see a lot of people trying to, well, I tried to get it to do this, replace this entire thing I do. And it didn't work or, or I'm terrified that it's going to replace this entire thing I do rather than saying, no, remember before you had to turn your hand to screw the screw in. Now you just press a button and the thing goes in like it's assistive. And, and,

And it's been hard for people because it's so human in a way. I think it's been hard for people to calibrate. Right. It's I think it's because it's so human and conversational. I think people don't calibrate well around that. I saw a video that TikTok or something of like a Gen Z person calling it the chat GPT hyphen.

Because ChatGPT uses so many em dashes. And I put spaces between mine, so I go through it and add the spaces. So that's the tell. If you see a lot of em dashes without spaces, that might be AI-created. But I also feel like people... I've talked with a lot of journalists about this, and they view it as cheating.

Like AI is cheap. Using AI is cheap. I will use this example. I used to be really great at designing icons for all the computers with either in black and white or then 16 colors. And I could do this amazing technique called dithering, which is you create gradients by using just two colors by making the dots kind of

You know, you're kind of doing everything by hand. And when, you know, macOS and Windows. I love it. You were good at that. It's super hot. Incredible, right? So hot. When they came out with 256 colors for the operating system, I was like, I refused to do it for months because I thought it was cheating.

Hunger strike. Yeah. I mean, it's like this thing I've spent so much time learning how to do. It can be done quickly, but everything's cheating, guys. You know, you had to put like letter presses together. You had to like, you know, you didn't have like autocorrect. You didn't have any of these things. Like at the end of the day, you have to understand what the value is of what you're providing. And the value you're providing is whatever the output is that you've guided from.

And if it's yours, it's yours. Like, that's fine. Taste is going to play so much bigger role. Also, I think, you know, just from like a writing perspective, it combines writing with editing, right? And I think a lot of

You know, there's, there are different skill sets, but they're obviously very related and it's a mix between the two. And to me going forward a lot, at least within writing is going to be a combination of writing and editing. Like you're going to need to be both. Would you mind getting the AI to write the newsletter this week? No, we could do that.

Maybe it's not going to write it though. It's just going to be like, for instance, let me go through how I'm going to use it for, for a research report. Like I have a, I had like all of the calls. I'm asking you to write it.

Oh, are you? Well, I mean, I'll do it with, no, wait, I'm not going to do it. It's like Thursday. I got stuff to do. How do you write a research report with AI, Brent? Well, this might be boring. No, no, it's not. It's nice. A plowhead. So like after like the call with like clients and stakeholders, that transcript gets fed into AI that keeps all of my stuff in there, knows all of the rebooting's content. I've uploaded everything in there.

And then it comes up, we go back and forth on what the questions are going to be in the outline. And then the survey gets produced. I like edit it and change things and whatnot. And then the results get loaded back up into the survey. I have...

a freelancer who is interviewing a bunch of stakeholders with questions that I created with the AI, then all those interviews are going to get uploaded along with case studies, many case studies that he's writing. Basically, it's almost like an auto assembly plant I'm trying to make to create what will end up being a 3,000 word research report that I think

will be done in probably like a quarter of the time. But just this high quality. I'm going to write the thing, but it's going to be done with all of the inputs being fed in there. In some ways, the role is like you kind of, everybody turns into this writer-editor hybrid.

Right. Like a writer, editor, researcher hybrid where you kind of merge all these things together and you're augmented with things like AI. You still need to make sure that every every word in that is touched and made sure that it's like comes like something you would write. But I mean, I think it's incredible. It just definitely speeds things up. You know, you know, what's also cheating? Having an editor.

That is. Which a lot of people in the media don't realize sometimes. Nice. Okay. Good product. Do we have a good product? We can take you on just a little quick journey. I guess I was just thinking about it and I don't really want to, like this is going to sound a little bit, I don't know, fussy or pretentious, you know? You?

Never. Well, I had a nice travel experience and a nice media experience and actually a nice nut and beverage experience. Nuts? You know...

No, well, I like the nuts on an airplane. I like those nuts. No, on the plane. I actually sometimes ask for an extra serving of the warm almonds. Oh, that's virgin. You were on virgin. No, I was on American, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. On the way over, I watched kind of a cool movie. I had the book. I never read it. Nickel Boys is a movie based on a book by Colson Whitehead.

And the way it's shot is kind of cool, sad story, but I think worth watching. And then, you know, if you can only discipline yourself enough so that you, you know, it's like forcing yourself to read on an airplane can be an amazing experience. And I'm reading a book that I'm loving right now, Brian, called, not for you, Alex, it's called Moth Smoke.

It's Mohsin Hamid. He's a British Pakistani writer. And he had written another book that I read earlier in the summer that I mentioned, I think, on a previous podcast. But I was going on last week, Brian, about The Greatest Hotel in America being, you know, that hotel you took me to. The Four Seasons. Yeah.

I stayed in a great hotel in London. Like, terrific. I stayed in the Mandarin Oriental in Mayfair, and it was unbelievable. Oh, Mayfair, huh? All the oligarchs. Someone booked it for me. Someone had a hookup, and the level of detail in that hotel is unbelievable. You don't need to excuse your life. It's okay, man. Oh, no, it's fine. But the only thing that wasn't a good product is I am so over these multi-course...

sort of Michelin tasting menu meals. They're so stupid. I hate them. They force you to sit there for like four hours. They're too long and there's too much food.

Three desserts? Who needs three desserts? I agree. I agree. And you'd leave feeling sick and then you spent like so much money. It's horrible. By the way, you sound like Elita Seinfeld right now. That could be a new shtick. No. Is it a bad product or Michelin star tasting? Hey, what about those warm almonds? The worst. The worst. Don't you just hate it when, you know, you have to get up from your first glass seat so they can turn it into a bed? Oh.

I'm not ready for sleep yet. Well, no, I mean, this happens to be... That's how cuisine, right? Like, I mean, that's like, it's the experience. It's not the food. Yes, yes. And I think some of those... Presentations. Some of those are really good. I went to one at a place called Merchant Roots. And there's Troy. I think you would like it. They are... Every season they change the theme and the theme is very fun and it's kind of semi-interactive. You go from room to room. I don't want my... I don't want themes. Yeah.

I want to sit and eat a nice meal with you. Well, you can do that too. I mean, it's a choice. It's a free market. You know what else, you guys? I bought a new iPhone. I haven't bought a new one in, I don't know, three years. They're pretty good. Well, there we go. That's the review. Like MKBHD, we're coming for you. They're pretty good. The new iPhone is pretty good. I get a new one every year because I have a subscription. How do you get that? Is that a thing? Yeah.

I just pay, I just send them 70 bucks a month and I just get the new phone when it comes out. It's only 70? I don't know. I'm not good with money. Is that an Apple program? Yeah. Do you have that program? No, I don't. I just buy it when my phone starts to slow down. I have a subscription water pick. I get the new one. So what was your good product there? I don't know. Almonds, just being rich. Okay.

I'm not rich. I just happen to have this great experience that I want to share with you guys. Thank you. Well, I have a good product. I think it's an older movie, but I don't think enough people have watched it. It's called The Death of Stalin. It's with Steve Buscemi is in it.

It's, you know, we're talking about holding court and it happens. It's a comedy. So it's quite light fare. But Michael Palin, Jeffrey Tambor and Jason Isaacs from the White Lotus. It's a nice hour and 45 minutes and it shows you in a very comedic way how people react around ultimate power.

and it's really, really good. I recommend it. It's great. It's great. Did you see the finale of White Lotus, Brian? Oh, yeah. I'm not caught up yet. It was fine. I don't want to ruin it for Alex. Don't ruin it for me. I can't believe you watched it. I'm slow. Everyone talks about it. We don't always have the energy to watch that. We watch other stuff. We kind of have a mix of shows that we watch. Do you guys watch Mork and Mindy reruns?

I loved Mork & Mindy. I never watched Mork & Mindy. Pam Dauber, she's a great actress. RIP. No, there's a lot. There's way too much good TV to watch. And then we watch YouTube a lot, honestly. Like the amount of YouTube we watch is ridiculous. Like long form shit on YouTube is great. Like Elephant Graveyard and, you know, some of these like... That's not exactly relaxing fare, Alex. It's like my wife and I, we relax to death metal.

I mean, I find it relaxing because it makes me feel less crazy that somebody else sees the world in a way. So this is tangential before we go, but maybe it's for a different episode, but I'll go ahead. Have you noticed there's a very strange thing with modern comedy overlapping with like libertarian politics and the like

podcast, just asking questions crowd. Oh, this is a whole episode. That's why I started with my rant at the beginning of this episode. Andrew Schultz, then there's this guy Dave Smith all of a sudden who's on like Lex Friedman and all the pie. They all go on. Everyone promotes each other. Is this like an official kind of taboo? A growth product manager, right, from Facebook is being interviewed by a comedian about tariff policy.

And people are then abstracting the most relevant policy points and putting them on X. That's modern media.

I was listening to this comedian, Dave Smith, talk about Israel, Palestine, and Ukraine on Lex Friedman. And then I was asking myself, why am I listening to this? Well, also, Lex Friedman, insufferable. I thought you liked Lex Friedman. No, no, I do not. I always found him kind of insufferable. I might have said a couple of positive things. He's interviewing Putin.

Yeah, let's see if he's as fair and balanced with Putin as he was with the other guy. Zelensky, is he the other guy? It's a grift. Brian, it's called audience capture. All right? It's called audience capture. So what you do is you kind of

You align yourself and the right wing is really good at that. There's a lot of shared talking points and you get them from wherever and it creates this ecosystem. It started with Joe Rogan. Everybody is kind of in Joe Rogan's orbit and it creates an environment where these people jump on each other's podcast for audience capture, which means that even if you don't totally agree with what's being said, at least you're not going to push too hard. Everybody knows...

the grift, right? You're going to go there. It's going to be pretty friendly and you're going to hear stuff that you might not completely agree with, but you kind of nodding along and saying, yeah, you know, maybe, maybe vaccines are bad. And that's how you get an audience these days within that framework. And so that's why we're seeing more and more and more of these. And honestly, like comedians make a lot more money from some of these podcasts than they do touring. It's a lot less work. So it's, it's, it's beneficial.

That's it for this episode of People vs. Algorithms, where each week we uncover patterns shaping media, culture, and technology. Big thanks, as always, to our producer, Vanya Arsinov. She always makes us a little clearer and more understandable, and we appreciate her very, very much. If you're enjoying these conversations, we'd love for you to leave us a review. It helps us get the word out and keeps our community growing.

Remember, you can find People vs. Algorithms on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and now on YouTube. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again next week. All right. Cool. Let's leave it there. We'll have AI write the newsletter. Yes. Thank you.